Ajax: Creating Web Pages with Asynchronous JavaScript and XML

Chapter 1. Types of Web Pages While I was in college, sometime during the Pliocene, I took a science fiction class. The interesting thing about this class is that one student didn't realize until midterms that it wasn't a physiology class. I...

1.1. Static Web Pages Static web pages are the original type (and for what seemed like about 10 minutes the only type) of web pages. When dealing with the distribution of technical documents, there aren't very many changes to the original document...

1.2. Dynamic Web Pages Static web pages have three major problems. The first is that they're boring. Think of it as visiting the park down the road on vacation every year. Unless that park is Yellowstone, or there's lots of alcohol involved, it's ...

1.3. Web Browsers Without a web browser, though, web pages are rather useless. The majority of people wandering around the Internet wouldn't fully appreciate them. Yes, there is the indentation, but without a browser, there is no scripting or pict...

1.4. A Brief Introduction to Cross-Browser Development Knowledge of different browsers, their capabilities, or merely their existence is often an aid in a discipline called cross-browser development. Cross-browser development can be one of the mos...

1.5. The Server Side of Things The purpose of this book is to explain how Ajax works, paying particularly close attention to the web browser; however, a web browser is only part of the equation. Even for the biggest client-side fan in the world, i...

1.6. We Learn by Doing The problem with working in the computing field is that technology insists on advancing. Learn something new today, and 2 years down the road, it is obsolete. Because of this, it's necessary to continue learning the latest...

1.7. Summary The intention behind this chapter is that it serve as something of an explanation of the humble beginnings of the World Wide Web, starting with a single server and growing into the globe-spanning network that it is today. First the...